In a hospital or pharmacy, it has been general that medicines prescribed by a doctor are supplied to a patient by using a medicine supply apparatus disclosed in JP-UM-B-57-5282 (B65B1/30) (it is referred to as a tablet packaging machine in this publication), for example. According to this system, medicines (tablets, capsules or the like) whose number is indicated in a medical prescription are discharged from the inside of a tablet case one by one by using a discharge drum (referred to as an array board in the above publication), passed through a chute and then collected in a hopper. Thereafter, the medicines thus collected are packaged with packaging paper or put in a bottle
An extremely large number of tablet cases are accommodated in a case accommodating portion of such a medicine supply apparatus in accordance with the types of medicines. Furthermore, each tablet case is normally detachably mounted in the case accommodating portion because the types of medicines are renewed or medicines are supplemented, and thus some space for mounting/detaching each tablet case on/from the case accommodating portion must be kept at the upper side of each tablet case. For this reason, the case accommodating portion of the medicine supply apparatus must be dimensionally scaled up in connection with multiplication of the types of medicines to be treated, and thus the whole size of the medicine supply apparatus is increased. Therefore, an improvement has been required.
Furthermore, in the medicine supply apparatus described above, tablet cases, chutes, a hopper, etc. may be polluted with fine powder occurring from medicines, or a packaging machine for packaging medicines into packaging paper and a bottling machine for bottling medicines (both are charging machines) have a risk that they have a breakdown because they have relatively complicated mechanisms. However, in the conventional medicine supply apparatus as described above, particularly the hopper and the charging machines are fixed in the main body of the apparatus, and thus it has been remarkably difficult to carry out maintenance such as cleaning, exchanging of parts, etc. on these machines.
Still furthermore, various kinds of containers to be charged with medicines, for example, packages achieved by subjecting packaging paper to heat-adhesion, so-called blister packages, etc. are used in connection with application fields. However, as described above, in the conventional medicine supply device, the charging machines such as the packaging machine, the bottling machine, etc. are designed to be fixed in the main body of the medicine supply apparatus in advance, and thus plural types of medicine supply apparatuses each of which is equipped with a charging apparatus such as a bottling machine, a packaging machine, a blister packaging machine or the like are manufactured in connection with the types of contains for medicines. Therefore, there has been a problem that the manufacturing cost and the part managing cost are increased.
Particularly when medicines are packaged and divided into packages in the medicine supply apparatus described above, a nozzle is fixed to an outlet at the lower end of a hopper for catching medicines, the nozzle is inserted into heat-adhesive packaging paper wound in a roll shape, and then medicines are charged in the packaging paper. Accordingly, if the feeding position of the packaging paper and the nozzle position are not accurately matched with each other, the packaging paper is unnecessarily expansively opened, so that some trouble occurs in heat-adhesion or some trouble occurs in the feeding operation of the packaging paper itself. Therefore, the securing positions of the hopper and the nozzle must be strictly specified, and it has been difficult to perform a fabrication work.
The present invention has been implemented to solve the conventional technical problem as described above, and has an object to provide a medicine supply apparatus which can suppress scale-up thereof with increasing the number of tablet cases to be accommodated in the medicine supply apparatus.
Furthermore, the present invention has another object to provide a medicine supply apparatus in which maintenance such as cleaning, exchanging of parts, etc. can be remarkably easily performed.
Still furthermore, another object of the present invention is to provide a medicine supply apparatus which can be improved in generality and convenience and save the cost.